I love eBay. Although it lacks the permanence of a traditional archive, I cherish the chance encounters I'm afforded in its fluid and neverlasting virtual repository of Chinese movie ephemera. I've learned so much from following the lead of some star photo or movie flyer that I've seen listed. For example, take this photograph of Chen Yumei, which just went up for auction the other day. Even though I'm pretty familiar with the major stars of early Chinese cinema, I had no idea who she was. Of course, this evident gap in my knowledge only made me determined to find out about her.
A Google book search revealed that the answer lurked within a few books in my personal library. It turns out that Chen Yumei is none other than the wife of Renji Shaw, the eldest of the Shaw brothers. In 1925 Renji Shaw founded Tianyi Film Company (also known as Unique Film Company), the first incarnation of the production arm of the Shaw Brothers movie empire. Chen Yumei was one of the studio's first stars (along with movie queen Hu Die) and made some thirty-odd films from 1926 until her retirement in 1934. It seems that her film debut was Tang Bohu Woos Qiuxiang* (唐伯虎點秋香), the first (?) silver screen adaptation of the legendary "flirting scholar" Tang Bohu. If you're like me, you may be more familiar with this story from later versions, such as the Shaw Brothers' huangmei opera film The Three Smiles (1969) or Stephen Chow's hilarious and irreverent Flirting Scholar (1993).
Anyway, I'd love to know more about Chen Yumei. She was evidently quite popular. According to Michael Chang's "The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Movie Actresses and Public Discourse in Shanghai, 1920s-1930s", Chen was the first runner-up in a 1933 contest sponsored by Mingxing Daily to determine China's "Movie Queen". (Hu Die took the crown and Ruan Lingyu came in third.) As far as I know, none of her films have survived, but there are some intriguing titles in her filmography, like a 1928 film called King Boxer (拳大王) and a Chinese version (亞森羅賓) of Arsène Lupin, the famous fictional French thief.
Further Reading
- Chen Yumei filmography in English
- Chen Yumei filmography in Chinese
- Hong Kong Cinema: A Cross-Cultural View by Law Kar and Frank Bren
- "The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Movie Actresses and Public Discourse in Shanghai, 1920s-1930s" by Michael G. Chang in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943 edited by Yingjin Zhang
*A big thanks to Deejay at The Chinese Mirror for correcting the English translation of Chen Yumei's first film!
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